John Wall, Alex Rodgers

John Wall, computer-generated sounds, severe editing, arrangement and composition. Alex Rodgers, voice, computer-generated sounds. This work was compiled from improvisations, independently-recorded fragments and pre-written texts over the specified period. A second edition of Work 2006 -2011 (E114) is also available. Mastered by Jacques Beloeil and John Wall.

This latest collaboration by electronic composer John Wall and his old sparring partner, poet Alex Rodgers, gets off to a terrific start. We seem to be inside Rodgers’s throat as he gargles out a couple of vowels and launches an incantation: “I will fawn over you/Gibbering scarecrow of some bulk/ Smelling like a midden”. Rodgers has a voice rarely heard: working class, pissed off and oozing character. The way he manhandles a sentence is utterly compelling, and you just want to hear a load more. He may be depressed but his love for these words is apparent. He rolls around a phrase like “angular cluster”, examining it from different, well, angles, getting steadily angrier, and the contrast with the surgical strike of Wall’s sounds is exhilarating. (The Wire)